The network announced on Thursday it was axing the show, hosted by Grant Denyer, Ed Kavalee and Ash London. It had suffered the station's worst ratings in the timeslot in almost two years, a 3.1 per cent audience share, in last month's radio survey.

Advertisement

Friday's final episode offered a subtle farewell, the hosts playing it straight and barely addressing the show's last goodbye.

"It would've been silly to do a big thing, everyone's back at work on Monday!" explains Fordham, citing London's nightly program and Kavalee's fill-in role alongside Dave Hughes in drive.

"Grant [Denyer] already has a couple of shows that he's doing with us, and we're already starting to talk about some ideas for next year, too."

While perhaps ego-deflating for its hosts, the station's renewed focus on music over on-air talent isn't without precedent: it's a strategy that's proven steadily successful for 2DayFM's breakfast competitors at Smooth FM.

"Our target is very different to theirs, and our tone is different to theirs... But I think there's something around that escapism: people have hectic lives, and there's a desire to be able to switch off a bit," says Fordham.

Unlike Smooth's mellow fare, 2Day's breakfast tunes will be more "uptempo, upbeat" and targeted to their "30-something, predominantly female" demographic, she adds.

Loading

"We really feel this is something our audience wants, and we've got to try something different – we've been through what, five, six shows?" says Fordham, losing count of the station's breakfast struggles.

"We obviously didn't just want to go around to doing another show 'cause, let’s be honest, it's not working. So what do we do? Do we just keep doing the same thing, or do we recognise the fact that our audience don't want that?"

On Thursday, critics – including rival breakfast personality, KIIS FM's Kyle Sandilands – mocked 2Day's plans, suggesting that, in this age of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, listeners no longer tune into radio for music. The relative success of easy-listening stations like Coles Radio on the digital network, which has increased its audience by 26 percent over the last two years, suggests the opposite.

"If you look at what's happened with music streaming services across the world, Australia has probably been a lot slower in terms of adoption of it. And also the market penetration here [for streaming services] is steady; they're not making incremental numbers," says Fordham.

"Also, I'm not saying it's isolated solely to youth audiences, but that's where the majority of intake [of streaming services] is. So to anyone who thinks music doesn't have a place on radio anymore, that's incorrect. And we haven't seen a decline in our numbers throughout the work day at all."

"We're not afraid of failure. Failure should be an opportunity for us to learn – and we've had plenty of opportunities to learn with lots of shows! But of course it's disheartening when you're not seeing the numbers you think a show deserves," she says.

"Ultimately it reinforces that, in this market, we're not going to win if we just keep putting in talent; we won't win that battle. Because there's three heritage shows already [2GB*'s Alan Jones, KIIS FM's Kyle & Jackie O, and WSFM's Jonesy & Amanda], which have been here for over 10 years, with established names and followings.

"So they can play in that space; we're going to play in another space."

2DayFM's all-music breakfasts, led by veteran deejay Jamie Angel, will begin on Monday.

*Nine, the owner of this masthead, has a majority stake in Macquarie Media, the owner of radio stations 3AW and 2GB.